Get non-english Character as english character

Question

Ok, my case is like this.

First off, the thing I doing is taking the contact name via the address book, and display the name, the name might contain english, non-english (chinese, japanese or etc.), symbol and so on. The problem I facing now is the non-english character do not group according to the group, which let said suppose the 'X' is fall under group 'G', but it display in the next group. Like below, that chinese word should fall under group 'G'.

I have saw one condition in the code is when it is not within the A - Z, it will group them in the '#' group. The code is not written by me, I currently doing a bug fixing thingy. Then this index thing is fully customize by hand, so ...

Is there any way to know whether the character is symbol, or a non-english character?! Or is there a way we can get the contact from the address book by group???

Below code is the part that check the character where it suppose to group.

name = [name stringByTrimmingCharactersInSet:[NSCharacterSet punctuationCharacterSet]];
selectCharacter = [[name uppercaseString] characterAtIndex:0];

if( (selectCharacter > 'Z') || (selectCharacter < 'A')){
                        selectCharacter = '#';
                }

        if( currentCharacter != selectCharacter ){
            // Store Old
            if( currentCharacter > 0 ){
                NSMutableArray * data =  [allPeopleSectionIndex lastObject];
                [data insertObject:[NSNumber numberWithInt:currentCount] atIndex:2];
            }

            // Setup for New
                        currentCharacter = selectCharacter;
            currentCount = 1;
            currentCharacterIndex ++;

            // 0: char, 1: section start, 2: count
            NSMutableArray * data = [[NSMutableArray alloc] initWithObjects:
                                     [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%c", currentCharacter], 
                                     [NSNumber numberWithInt:i], 
                                     [NSNumber numberWithInt:0],
                                     nil];
            [allPeopleSectionIndex addObject:data];
            [data release];

        } else {
            currentCount++;
}

Answer 1

The correct way to do this is to use the UILocalizedIndexedCollation class, even if you're not using it as the index for your table view.

NSInteger index = [[UILocalizedIndexedCollation currentCollation] sectionForObject:chineseLetter collationStringSelector:@selector(self)];
NSString *englishLetter = [[UILocalizedIndexedCollation currentCollation] sectionIndexTitles] objectAtIndex:index];

Note that you should not use the currentCollation shared instance if you're planning on using it as an index later.

Answer 2

I faced this subject while building index for music library, which is quite language-mixed. So here is what came up with: sort library alphabetically (for instance, using NSSortDescriptor), grab first letters and then group indicies using some fixed step = min (step, letter-count).

Like this, step = 5:

[a a a a a a a a a a b b b c d e g g g h i i i i i i i k l m]
[a                   b         e         i             k

Answer 3

I have found a way to read the chinese character and organize them according to A-Z alphabet. Here is the file that I find from this site (chinese site). I will include the code incase some of you need. Please note, Im not sure it is a proper way or not.

Let said I call this class as Pinyin.

Pinyin.h

@interface Pinyin : NSObject {

}

- (char) pinyinFirstLetter:(unsigned short) hanzi;

@end

Pinyin.m

#import "Pinyin.h"

#define HANZI_START 19968  
#define HANZI_COUNT 20902

@implementation Pinyin
static char firstLetterArray[HANZI_COUNT] = "ydkqsxnwzssxjbymgcczqpssqbycdscdqldylybssjgyqzjjfgcclzznwdwzjljpfyynnjjtmynzwzhflzppqhgccyynmjqyxxgd"
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"xy";

- (char) pinyinFirstLetter:(unsigned short) hanzi{
    int index = hanzi - HANZI_START;
    if (index >= 0 && index <= HANZI_COUNT) {
        return firstLetterArray[index];
    }else{
        //anything that not recognize will return as a '#'
        return '#';
    }
}
@end

This method will return the chinese character according to the english alphabet (but some Japanese Kanji will recognize as chinese though... which is not correct).

To use this method (example):

char selectedChar = 0;
if ([name canBeConvertedToEncoding: NSASCIIStringEncoding]) {//if english
  selectedChar = [[name uppercaseString] characterAtIndex:0];
}else { //if not english
  Pinyin *pinyin = [[Pinyin alloc]init];

  //return the english alphabet
  selectedChar = [pinyin pinyinFirstLetter: /* Pass in the character here */];

  [pinyin release];
}

If you have any method, idea or recommendation please tell me too. I still need one method that can read Japanese and organize it into group.

credit go to the original author.

Answer 4

Its a good idea to always use rangeOfComposedCharacterSequenceAtIndex: to ensure you handle single characters that are composed of a sequence of more than one unichar (this is most likely what was behind your incorrect grouping of non-english characters), and use stringByFoldingWithOptions:locale: to ensure you reduce accented characters to an appropriate common base form (note that the folded character is lower case).

Hence, form your selectCharacter as follows:-

NSRange range = [name rangeOfComposedCharacterSequenceAtIndex: 0];
NSString* initialChar = [name substringWithRange: range];
NSString* initialCharFolded = 
    [initialChar
        stringByFoldingWithOptions: 
            NSCaseInsensitiveSearch
          + NSDiacriticInsensitiveSearch
          + NSWidthInsensitiveSearch
        locale: [NSLocale currentLocale]];
if ([initialCharFolded length] == 1)
    selectCharacter = [[initialCharFolded uppercaseString] characterAtIndex: 0];
else
    selectCharacter = '#';

if (selectCharacter > 'Z' || selectCharacter < 'A')
    selectCharacter = '#';

HTH